


"Going to Weisshaupt"

by thedragonagelesbian



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Lesbian Character, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 21:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedragonagelesbian/pseuds/thedragonagelesbian
Summary: Belladonna Hawke never wanted to come to the Inquisition in the first place, so when she sees the first opportunity to leave, she takes it. But the journey back to the loves of her life hits a few snags along the way...





	"Going to Weisshaupt"

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my Bella-loving bullshit!!!

Self-sacrifice had never really been Bella’s thing. It was not the dying that concerned her. She had had her life threatened so many times by so many things that death— her death, anyway— had lost its meaning years ago. Around the same time she fell to her knees in front of the Arishok’s dead body, clutching at a tear through her abdomen, in one side and out the other, the kind of wound that should be gushing blood. Would be, were it not for the very last scraps of her magic working to stitch her skin back together.

Around the same time when the thing threatening her life the most was herself. When she drank herself to darkness by night and wasted away to nothing in bed by day.

But therein lay her issue with self-sacrifice. Its requirement of activity. She could and had undertaken any number of passive or indirect activities that brought her closer to death. Self-sacrifice necessitated agency. Doing things.

She had always been terribly bad at doing things.

So when she turned to Inquisitor Lavellan and began to speak, she was surprised with herself. She could not say what exactly compelled her to offer herself up to the Nightmare now bearing down upon them. Maybe it was because the Grey Warden had offered first. Maybe because it was the right thing to do.

Or maybe because she knew it was an offer Inquisitor Lavellan was never going to take her up on. Lavellan was old, with wrinkles setting in around her eyes and the color leaching from her hair, and she knew well the horrors Loghain Mac Tir had invited upon the elves in Denerim’s Alienage when he was Teryn. Bella’s own gestures towards martyrdom had scarcely left her lips when Lavellan turned to Loghain, nothing but hardness in her eyes.

So she and Lavellan crashed through the Rift, out of that waking nightmare, and Loghain stayed behind. Bella had the deaths of many people weighing on her conscience, but that man was not one of them. Perhaps that was why she had offered. So that when she finally found Varric in the chaos after the battle and he kept his gaze low as he muttered, “It’s a shame, what happened to Loghain,” she did not feel like that shame was hers.

Another day, when she wasn’t brushing up against the limits of her physical capacities, she might’ve quipped about how they could get Dorian to turn back time and ask Lavellan to let her stay behind instead. Today, she simply looked her friend in the eye and said, “You don’t believe that.”

“No,” he said with a sigh, a shrug, and a shake of the head. “If I had to choose between you and him, hell, you and most people…” He trailed off, gaze dropping again. His shoulders were shaking. “I’m glad you’re still here, Nightshade.”

And Bella would have been glad for it too were it not for the lingering issue of the Inquisition. During the long march back to Skyhold, she found herself increasingly dragged into the Inquisitor’s tent along with Cassandra and Cullen, and she would stand there and watch them talk strategy before they would turn to her and ask for her advice. Because she had far surpassed her own expectations as well as theirs, and now they really actually thought she was  _ useful.  _ Maybe she could be of some help on the field, but she knew nothing about Orlais or the Game or politicking or appeasement, and she didn’t have the energy required to care about any of it for even a moment.

And even when she had cared, she had never been good at this stuff. There was a headless viscount buried somewhere in the Free Marches who could attest to that.

But even she, with her well-honed skill of denial sharpened over more than a decade of trauma, could not deny that she was marginally more useful with the Inquisition than she was sailing the seas with her lovers. Indeed, there was nowhere else she was more marginally useful. That made it all the more difficult to think of an excuse that would allow her to escape back to Isabela and Merrill.

They had made it all the way back to Skyhold before Bella finally saw her way out. They were in the War Table Room, standing around the map of southern Thedas. She was listening to the Inquisitor and her advisors talk about this and that. Words devoid of meaning about people she had never met, places she had never been to and could not care about. All the while, she fixated on a blighted spot on the edge of the Hinterlands, the small corner where the West Road and the Imperial Highway met. Where Lothering had been before the Blight had wiped it off the map.

“— still the issue of Weisshaupt.” She stirred at that, a semblance of recognition flickering in her mind. Some city somewhere. Sounded vaguely familiar- Carver might have mentioned it in a letter? “Relations between Ferelden and Grey Warden command have been strained since the end of the Fifth Blight; to explain everything that happened at Adamant, as well as the threat Corypheus poses, simply by letter could strain things further. We’d be better off sending someone- and not just a lowly messenger either.”

“Who can we afford to spare?” Josephine asked. “With the Winter Ball in almost a month—”

“We do not need everyone for that damned Orlesian posturing ritual,” Cullen interrupted sharply. “We should send some of the Grey Wardens— any of the higher-ups that are left. And Blackwall too, of course.”

“Actually…” Josephine wrapped her finger around a stray lock of hair as she bit her lip. “I’d prefer if Warden Blackwall stay here.”

Stay. Staying here. The thing Bella absolutely did  _ not _ want to do. Oh yes, this was her chance! Whatever it was, whatever would get her out of the Inquisition. “I’ll do it!”

All eyes turned towards her. Lavellan tilted her head to the side. Leliana stared with a slight frown on her lips. She expected more of a reaction from Cullen, but his face was blank. If any of them could read her, could know how badly she wanted to leave, it would be him. He would probably be happiest to see her leave too.

“Oh…” Josephine spoke, disturbing the uneasy silence. “Thank you for volunteering, Champion. With the Inquisitor’s blessing,” she glanced to Lavellan, who gave a small nod, “you’ll head for Weisshaupt as soon as possible.”

“I’ll put together a convoy to accompany you,” Cullen offered quickly.

Bella fought hard to keep from balking at the suggestion. “I don’t need protecting.”

“But you might need help,” he insisted. “The journey to Weisshaupt is a long one, and even you cannot fight off a gang of Tevinter mages or an ambush of bandits on your own.”

She wanted to protest further. If she really was going to Weisshaupt, then Cullen made an excellent point. But she wasn’t going to Weisshaupt, or at least she did not intend to. A convoy would make it so much harder to slip away, back to the high seas, back to her lovers. But how could she argue against it without revealing her true intentions?

She did not get the chance to, for Lavellan interceded. “A few soldiers is a fine idea. Of course, we should send an actual Grey Warden as well.”

Leliana fixed her eyes on Bella’s. “Perhaps we should write to your brother.”

“Absolutely not.” The snap, the moment of sudden viciousness, surprised everyone in the room except Cullen and herself. She was not known for her strength, and what little of it she had she kept close to her chest, for most days she needed every ounce of it. But she could always spare some to protect those she loved, and she had vowed since Varric first wrote to her of the Inquisition that she would keep them far away from her little brother.

Yet again, Josephine was the quickest on her feet, stunned for only a moment before saying, “Very well. We will find another Grey Warden to accompany you, and a small party of troops will be prepared. The real question is how you will get to Weisshaupt.”

Though Bella was aching to leave the room, every nerve ending alight with the possibility of  _ running _ , she forced herself to stay. She needed to know the route they would take.

“The Minanter River will get them close,” Leliana commented. “Close enough I am sure that the Wardens could be persuaded to send an escort to take them the rest of the way through the desert.”

“That means they’ll need a ship,” Cullen commented.

“I will ask Cassandra if she can get us one,” Josephine replied. “The ferry from Jader to Cumberland will get them to Nevarra in a day; then all they need to do is follow the Imperial Highway to the Bridge of Dragons.” Hearing such a name, Bella half-hoped her mood would improve. That she would feel a flicker of excitement, imagining how the bridge could have acquired such a name. But she felt nothing. “Then they can board the ship Cassandra provides for us.”

“Then it is settled?” Lavellan asked, and her advisors nodded.

And Bella, repeating the route in her mind, was quick to ask, “Should I start packing now?”

“Yes,” Leliana said. “You must leave as soon as possible.”

_ Oh, I intend to.  _ With a stiff bow, Bella ducked out of the room. In truth, she had no need to pack. She had only brought a few possessions to Skyhold, and she kept them all in a rucksack shoved underneath her bed. Ever since the Fifth Blight, she had always been prepared to flee at a moment’s notice. A survival habit which had served her  _ very _ well in Kirkwall. And it served her again now, allowing her to hunt down the only person worth saying goodbye to in this festering hell pit of a fortress.

Of course, he wasn’t hard to find. Varric Tethras stood by the fire in the main hall, wooden tablet in one hand and a quill in the other, pouring ink across thin sheets of paper. Bella watched quietly, not wanting to disturb his work, though curious as to what he was writing. As she inched nearer, she saw familiar names scrawled across the tops. _Dear Red_ _and Junior_ , _Dear Daisy and Rivaini_ , _Dear Broody_ , _Dear Blondie_ …

“I think they might want to know that you’re still alive,” Varric commented, not lifting his eyes from his work.

“You’re going to disappoint them all terribly,” Bella replied. “Just when they thought they had finally gotten rid of me.”

“No one thinks that, Nightshade.”

Bella rolled her eyes. Varric had been far less indulgent towards her self-deprecating humor ever since he joined the Inquisition. It was probably for the best, for both of them, but she had always found what was best for her to be terribly annoying. “You should tell them I’m leaving the Inquisition.”

That got him to look up, frowning, brow furrowed. “You’re what?”

“Leaving,” she repeated. “I’m…” she hoped Varric knew her well enough to realize her intentions, “‘going to Weisshaupt’. Playing messenger for the Inquisition.”

His frown worsened. “Weisshaupt is awfully far away.”

She shrugged. “I’ll have good company; they’ll keep me entertained.”

At that, the frown melted, and Varric let out a soft ‘ah’. He nodded and set his tablet aside on the table. “I suppose there isn’t any point in trying to convince you to come back.”

“This doesn’t have to be goodbye,” she replied. “You could come with me. I know you hate sailing, but.” She glanced around the keep, at the fussy twittering Orlesian nobles and the sentinel guards and the fucking throne at the other end of the hall. “It has to be better than here.”

Varric hesitated for a moment before replying, “There’s still work to do here.”

Bella scoffed. “That isn’t stopping me.”

He smiled at that, for some reason. “Nothing ever does.”

“You could,” she commented softly. “I came here for you.” She bit her lip, unsure what exactly compelled her to be bound to her friend in this way. Maybe it was the guilt. The fact that he had seen her go to hell and back and had never once thought of leaving her side. Maybe she felt like she owed him something for that. “I would stay too, if you asked.” 

Maybe it was because she had asked that same thing of so many others, selfishly, desperately, so afraid of the things she could do to herself when she was left alone. At least one of her friends deserved to have it offered in return.

Not everything offered had to be accepted, of course. “Nightshade, all I want from you now,” he took her hands, small and calloused in the palm of his thick leather gloves, “all I’ve ever wanted from you, is for you to be happy. And if that involves leaving, then I’ll help fight anyone who tries to stop you.”

Bella couldn’t help but beam down at her friend, at the same time as she tugged one of her hands free so she could gently shove his shoulder. “Sap.”

He chuckled, a small smile of his own forming on his lips. “Keep your voice down,” he scolded as he returned the push. “It’s fine if you know my true nature, but I have a reputation to keep around here.”

“You’re the one holding my hand,” she shot back. “You don’t think this,” she raised her left hand, still clasped in Varric’s, up in the air, “already gave it away?”

“Fair enough.” He laughed again, a deep, decaying noise Bella had missed far too often before she came to the Inquisition. His voice barely above a whisper, he murmured, “Fair enough… when do you think we’ll see each other again?”

Bella shrugged. “As soon as you decide you’re done with the Inquisition, I suppose. Hopefully not two years again; you’re long overdue for a reunion with Isabela and Merrill.”

“I’m not staying here forever,” Varric promised. “It’s too cold, and too many people get themselves in trouble out in nature.” Bella snickered, and he grinned. “For all its faults, at least Kirkwall bred murderers decent enough to kill people in alleys instead of ‘in the middle of absolute nowhere’ Ferelden.”

She laughed again. It was nice to be laughing again. “Do you think you’ll go back there, once you’re done here?”

“I can’t imagine going anywhere else,” he replied. “Kirkwall is my home.”

Bella didn’t respond for a moment. They had had this conversation two years ago, when Isabela got her hands on a ship, and it was just her, Bella, Merrill, and Varric left running. And Varric told her there wasn’t enough gold in Orlais to convince him to get on a boat voluntarily, and besides, he wanted to go back to Kirkwall, back to his home.

_ He asked me to come with him. And I told him Kirkwall wasn’t my home anymore. That I didn’t think it ever was.  _ Every alleyway and street, every bar and every building of any importance held some terrible memory. How could she call a place like that home?

“I have a different home now,” Bella said, mostly to herself, “and I’ve been away from them for far too long.”

“Indeed you have,” Varric murmured. He took both her hands in his and squeezed one more time before letting go. As he spoke, he reached for his tablet. “I should update my letter to them; I’m sure they’ll want to know your plan.”

Bella nodded. “Tell them if they want to get a letter to me, send it to the Bridge of Dragons.”

“Right.” Varric gave her a wink. “A ‘letter’.”

 

Like many foreigners who had come across the Bridge of Dragons on their travels up the Imperial Highway, Bella learned that to call it a bridge was a terrible misnomer. Well-worn, sun-burnished limestone steps led to a gate, wrought-iron and stretching across the impressive width of the steps. As one of her escorts talked with the gatekeeper, Bella peered through the bars and saw a market. Humans and elves dressed in linen bustled between makeshift stalls, where merchants hawked their wares from underneath thatched roofs. Ceramics, gems, gold figurines, ornate headdresses passed hands, and coin passed with them.

Glancing behind herself, Bella stared at the docks and houses lining the river with renewed interest. In that moment, she understood that the Bridge of Dragons was not a bridge but a city. Sprawling out across the banks but with this suspended plaza as its heart.

“--Hawke. Lady Hawke.”

She flinched at the name, drawn out of her wonder by the voice of one of the Inquisitor’s guards. No doubt seeing the shock across her face, he smiled apologetically before nodding to the gatekeeper, who had his hand stretched out.

“I’ll be needing your staff, ma’am.”

Bella blinked and reached back to touch it instinctively. Protectively. “Why?”

“We don’t allow fire on the bridge,” he replied. “That means matches, torches, hearthes, and especially staves.” He gave her a small smile. “Don’t worry, Champion. One of the men will run it across the river; it’ll be waiting on the other bank for you.”

Bella lifted her staff from its sling, though she held it close for several more moments, fingers wandering up and down the pitch black ebony length. Another complication. One more thing she would have to do if Isabela and Merrill were waiting for her past those gates. But if they really were there, then Bella needed to be inside the gates as well.

She held it out to the gatekeeper. As he wrapped his hand around it, she did not let go. “Be careful with that,” she said, her voice verging on pleading. “That belonged to a dear friend.”

“Of course, Champion.” He tugged, hard enough that her grip around the shaft instinctively tightened. Gritting her teeth, she forced out a sharp exhale and released the dragon-headed staff. “Now, you all should really get inside.” He glanced past the gates, to a large stone structure looming in the center of the bridge. “We’re about to have a Lift.”

At that, a bell began to toll, the sound so loud and deep Bella could feel it in her bones. She could not pretend to have the slightest idea what a ‘Lift’ was, but before she could ask, her escorts were ushering her through an opening in the gate. Cullen had picked his convoy well, each soldier tall and broad-shouldered and well equipped for ushering. He must have known that she often needed someone shoving her forward. Or perhaps he had some way of knowing that when her nerves were frayed enough, tired from the overactive and overreacting impulses from her frantic brain, the sword through the Inquisition’s sigil reminded her of another symbol. Another sword. This one wreathed in flames.

The gate swung shut behind them with a loud  _ clang _ .

“Let’s get moving.”

“Wait. I want to see the Lift!”

“Drya, it’s really not that special.”

“Says you! You grew up here; some of us have never seen it. It always sounded so incredible in your stories…”

So they lingered near the gates. Bella watched with mild curiosity as the gatekeeper stepped into one of the watchtowers. He came back out with a woman wielding perhaps the largest staff Bella had ever seen. The slender metal staff was nearly twice her height, with a golden sun sitting at the top. In the center of the sun blazed a ruby which began to glow as she tilted the staff left and right while she walked.

She stopped in the dead center of the stairs and pivoted, eyes towards the bridge. She had worked up a comfortable rhythm now, passing the staff between her hands quickly and easily. The bell rang out for the last time, and in that moment, her eyes narrowed. As the tremors of sound faded, she caught the staff in her right hand, wrapped her left hand around it, and brought it to the center. She closed her eyes, threw her head back, and lifted it high in the air.

Bella flinched when it came down, so certain she would feel electricity under her skin or be thrown down when the tip of the staff struck the ground. But nothing happened. Nothing so violent, anyway. The soft glow from the ruby shot down, through the shaft and then the woman’s body and into the ground below. But nothing  _ else _ happened.

Until the bridge began to lift.

The entire bridge, all its heavy stone and stalls and people, was bathed in a faint light coming from below the steps, and it began to rise up into the air. As it ascended ever higher, Bella saw the magic’s source: a dragon’s skull, chained to the underside of the steps. Its cavernous maw hung open, and it was spitting red— not as fire, but as magic. Something must have been set in its mouth to act as a second focus for the magic streaming out of the Nevarran’s sun-crested staff, amplifying it until it had the power to lift the bridge high into the air.

“Alright,” one of the soldiers, the captain, said. “You’ve seen it now. Pentaghast’s ship is leaving after the end of the Lift in half an hour, so we need to be on the other side of the bridge when that happens.”

“Anything in particular you need us to do in the meantime?”

“No. Anyone with coin to spare, feel free to go hunting for souvenirs, but keep an eye on the clocktower.” He nodded at that tall stone structure jutting out of the center of the bridge.

The rest of the soldiers grinned and murmured to themselves as they dispersed, leaving Bella alone with the captain. Bella almost smiled herself. Here it was: her chance to escape. She clasped her hands behind her back and stretched, rocking back and forth while she feigned a yawn. “I don’t suppose I’m allowed to go souvenir hunting as well.”

The captain gave her a strained smile. “Hate to be bearer of bad news, Lady Hawke, but Commander Rutherford…”

Her own smile soured in an instant. “Told you to treat me like a prisoner?”

“He thinks you might try to leave.”

“You caught me,” she said with an eye-roll. “I was planning on jumping off the side of the bridge, plummeting a dozen feet into the river, and turning myself into a fish without my staff.”

The corners of his mouth twitched as he fought to keep up the half-smile. “You understand why he’d be concerned, right?”

Diplomacy might have been a better strategy, but the captain’s tone was beginning to grate against her nerves. It sounded too close to pitying. “Are you concerned about me?”

“After what the commander told us about you?”

“And what exactly did he tell you?”

He folded his arms now, the smile vanishing as his face hardened. “He said you have a nasty habit of disappearing from the world after something bad happens. Said you locked yourself away in your mansion after the Arishok. That you fled the city while it burned after your friend blew it up.” He leaned down to thrust his face into Bella’s. “And he mentioned something about how eager you were to volunteer to run this little errand for the Inquisition.”

She might’ve been offended if she had thought higher of Cullen himself.  _ I do wish he had kept his opinion to himself; it would make my job here easier.  _

Without blinking, Bella reached up and clasped the captain by the shoulder. She smiled sweetly at him. “You remind me so much of my brother.” The captain furrowed his brows, lips parted to form a question. Bella relaxed her grip so she could give him a hard shove before turning and walking away. “And trust me, it isn’t a compliment!”

She heard a huff from behind her, followed by heavy footsteps. “I’m not thrilled about this arrangement either.”

“Then let me go off on my own,” Bella suggested. She kept a brisk pace, wondering all the while if she could annoy this man into leaving her alone. If he was truly anything like Carver, it wouldn’t be that hard.

Finally, he caught up to her and fell into step beside her. “Do you have to be difficult about this?”

“Of course.”

They continued moving forward in an uncomfortable silence. As they walked, Bella delighted in changing her pace at random. Stopping and starting, slowing down to a crawl in one moment and breaking into a sprint in the next. Her childish efforts were rewarded every time the captain’s breath grew more labored, every time his steps fell heavier on the pavement, every time his jaw tightened just a little bit more.

_ Oh, I should add this to my list of skills,  _ Bella thought as she stopped abruptly in front of the bell tower in the center of the bridge. When the captain, several paces ahead, froze and whirled around, his face was bent into an outright scowl.  _ Annoying men who are younger than me.  _ She responded with a sugary smile and turned her attention to the tower, feigning interest in the intricate designs scored into the tall limestone structure.  _ And older than me. I’m pretty good at that too.  _ She spared a glance at the captain. He was leaning against the tower with his eyes closed and his head lowered.  _ If I just stall long enough, I’m sure I’ll break him. _

Just as she was about to turn back to the tower, something caught her eye. A thick-coated, russet-colored mabari was trotting through the crowd. It was a polite creature, almost demure as it waited for gaps in the people to open up before moving forward. Catching Bella’s eye, it bounced in place and scraped at the ground, but was careful to keep its tag from wagging.

Bella had to fight hard to keep her own body language under control as she watched her mabari Andor inch closer.  _ My dog’s poker face is almost as good as mine. _

Andor stopped a few feet away and cocked his head to the side. The Maker had sent Bella the perfect tool for furthering her annoying shenanigans: her first ever partner-in-crime. With a slight smirk on her lips, she nodded at the captain and tapped the left side of her hip, where the man’s coin purse was sitting. Andor responded with an affirmative nod and crouched low. Bella looked up at the golden bell suspended at the top of the tower, so she could claim deniability.

“Hey!”

Bella smirked as she turned to see Andor with the coin purse in his maw. With a bark, he turned and tore off into the crowd. Shouting expletives, the captain took after him. Bella tracked their movements out of the corner of her eye while she looked around for any sign of the two people who must have let her mabari loose in the first place.

It wasn’t until she heard someone scream that she realized anything was wrong.

She whipped around just in time to see the captain fall to his knees, and then slump to the ground. Another man stood over him, holding a short and bloody knife. Andor dropped the coin purse with a growl.

“Oh, that escalated quickly.” Bella breathed in sharply as she took a step back. She reached behind herself, but when she curled her fingers around thin air, she remembered she didn’t have her staff. She was powerless. And this was a murderer. “This place must have its own guards, right?” Pedaling backwards, her eyes darted back and forth across the bridge. The crowd was clearing out. People huddled around the stalls while merchants brandished daggers of their own, or threw up purple protective wards. “Right?” She caught sight of them, a half dozen guards running from the other side of the bridge with swords raised. “This isn’t my problem to—”

The words died in her throat as someone grabbed her by the waist. Pulse spiking, Bella writhed in their grasp, and her fingers fumbled against the cold ridged metal of their greaves, trying desperately to pry their hands open. “What the hell is this?” she spat. She felt more hands grasping at her, pulling at her arms, covering her mouth. Even with the tin against her lips, she snarled, “A fucking  _ kidnapping _ ?!”

She couldn’t see much of anything with the sudden swarm of bodies pressing up against her— but she could still hear. In that moment, the sound of Andor’s growl was the sweetest noise in the world. One of the attackers fell away with a scream and Andor firmly latched to their knee. He threw them away and dove for another.

Bella heard a voice on her ear, hot and heavy and hissing Tevene. Everyone except the person holding her waist pulled away. Few were armed, and even fewer were wearing armor.

By all rights, they shouldn’t have been much of a threat to a mabari.

But then one of them snatched up a vase from a nearby stand and broke it across Andor’s face. Shards of porcelain clung to his maw as little red rivulets ran down his face. Another threw a dagger at him, tossing it up in the air in an artful arc. The tip of the blade burrowed into his back. A third pulled a vial of pulsing green from a pocket inside their robe. With a smirk, they lobbed it straight at Andor’s chest. With a yelp, Andor jumped away, but not before splashes of acid licked at his paws. It burned away the flesh of his front legs in thin, smoking strips.

For a moment, the panic crescendoed inside her chest and her mind. Something was pounding against her skull, right between the eyes, drowning everything else out, screaming  _ you can’t lose him! _

In the next, Andor’s pitiful howl brought her back into her own skin. She let out a sharp exhale. “Alright, assholes.” Bella forced her body to relax long enough to wrangle her thoughts in order. “Guards aren’t gonna get here soon enough, so you have to deal with me.”

She closed her eyes and dug her fingers into greaves, bracing herself against her captor’s arms. Her lungs heaved as she timed her breathing to the bounce in her knees. In and out. Up and down. All the while focusing inwards, letting the mana in her veins pull her towards the Fade. All the while clenching her jaw and trying not to think about how much this was going to hurt.

“Andor, retreat!”

She pushed herself up against her attacker’s arms and swung her legs up. She felt electricity pulsing underneath her skin as gravity drove them back down.

Her feet struck the limestone bridge. Thunder boomed not around her but from  _ inside _ of her. Vibrations split from her heels and up through her bones. The tremor hit her chest with enough force to knock the wind out of her lungs and then keep going, pressure mounting from the gaps in her rib cage, like something was trying to pop her sternum open. She couldn’t breathe.

Fire followed close behind, and she felt it on her skin, from beneath her skin, a thousand electric charges routed from something in her blood and out through the soles of her feet. Her heart was pumping lightning.

At least the lightning had the decency to stay localized. When the thunder reached her skull, it was with enough force to knock her out cold.

 

Bella woke up to the sound of her own heartbeat as blood rushed through her ears and struck against her skull. She sat up, gasping for breath, blinking rapidly to clear the fuzzy black dots from her sight. All she managed to do was making tears well up in her eyes. Her hands curled into fists against the cloth underneath her. A thin linen bed sheet, crumpling between her fingers while she screwed her eyes shut and tried to steady herself.

Focusing on the physical sensations always helped. The sheet clutched against her palms. The thick soft wolf pelt thrown across her naked body, slipping down her breasts. The… lack of sensation from the waist down, which she was definitely going to have to worry about later but not now. Not yet.

And finally, there was the slight rocking of the bed underneath her hands. Tilting back and forth. Rising and falling.

She was on a ship.

“Well.” Just the single word made her wheeze, croaking and spitting as her dry throat ached. “Either my plan to escape the Inquisition just got a hell of a lot harder, or—” She froze as she heard a soft whimper. Slowly, she opened her eyes and took a look at the room around her.

She wasn’t on just any ship. She was home.

The captain’s quarters of the Siren’s Call II hadn’t changed much since she was last on board. The dark wood walls were still lined with brightly threaded tapestries, one knitted for each of the Creators. A desk was still sitting underneath the only window, and that small circle of glass still let in enough light to keep the desk’s assortment of potted plants happy. A new oak cask sat in the corner, next to the old one. Though she couldn’t go over to check, Bella was certain that the latter’s wood was still reeking from that funny tasting Rivaini wine she had bought Isabela for her birthday. And there were the chests overflowing with gold and a pair of tall leather boots with a wide-brimmed scarlet red hat perched on top. And there were the stacks of arcane tomes and the piles of loose leaf paper surrounding a fragmented piece of pulsing red stone, itself encased in a shroud of hazy blue magic.

And of course, Andor was curled up on the bed beside her, making noises in his sleep. She sunk her hand into his long, thick fur. With a shaky sigh, she leaned over him, pressing her forehead into his flank with her eyes closed, breathing slowly.

When she blinked, she was on another ship, waiting out a storm with the other terrified refugees huddling in the hold. A decade later, the edges of the memory were fuzzy, but it wasn’t a hard picture to fill in. Bethany was gone. Mother was shell-shocked. Carver was angry. And Bella had been friendly with the crew long enough to get her hands on some alcohol. Drink straight to the point of passing out with her head against Andor, and she could skip the step that involved hiding her tears in his pelt.

“ _ Var vhenan! _ ”

Bella jerked up to see Merrill standing in the doorway with tears in her eyes. Merrill threw herself forward, her arms around Bella in an instant. Tears began to sting Bella’s eyes too. With a choked sob, she returned the hug and buried her face in Merrill’s neck. Her entire body began to shake in the other woman’s arms, those arms which had saved her life so many times, which had held her through the worst days since she had become the Champion.

Leandra had once told Bella that no one would ever love her until she loved herself. Ever since they first kissed, Merrill had proved her mother wrong every single day.

“I love you,” Bella blurted out, the words crashing out of her fast and slurred as she pressed wet kisses to Merrill’s neck. “I love you so fucking much. And you’re here.” She pulled away long enough to cup her face in her hands, stroking the lines of dull  _ vallaslin _ with her thumbs. She peppered Merrill’s cheeks with kisses. “And I’m here. And I don’t have to leave again.”

Merrill’s cheeks darkened, her lips splitting in a grin as she giggled. “Oh, you must have been so lonely with the Inquisition.”

“It was fucking awful. So many fucking Chantry priests and Orlesian nobles. And  _ Cullen _ was there, and then the fucking Wardens and  _ Adamant _ .” She could still hear the Nightmare’s voice curling in her ear.  _ Isabela and Merrill are going to die, just like your family, and everyone you ever cared about. _

The joke was on him, though. That was Bella’s running internal monologue on her worst days. No demon could invent anything more horrifying than her mind could.

“And, of fucking course, to top it all off, I’m fairly sure I almost died trying to get back to you all.” Merrill stiffened at that, and Bella pulled back to offer her love an apologetic smile. “Seems like it was a pretty close ‘almost’.”

Merrill’s mouth twisted. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for weeks, Bella.”

“Whoops.”

Merrill looked like she wanted to say more, sitting there with her mouth half-open, but before she could, the door swung open again, and there was Isabela. “Just docked in Ven—” She stopped abruptly as she saw Bella. Her face contorted somewhere between joy and angry. “Bella, Maker’s ass…”

Bella pouted. “You know, Merrill attacked me with a hug when we first saw each other.”

“This isn’t our first time seeing each other,” Isabela replied, folding her arms. “Or, I suppose, it isn’t my first time seeing you. Point is…” She sucked in her breath and let out a huffy sigh. “Fucking hell, I was so much better off when I didn’t care about anyone except myself.”

Bella held out her hand, and with another sigh, Isabela walked towards the bed. She took Bella’s hand and held it tight. “I’m so sorry I scared both of you. I can only imagine what the last few weeks have been like for the two of you.” She squeezed Isabela’s hand. “But I’m awake, I’m alive, and I’m here, so everything is going to be fine from here on out.”

Merrill winced. As Bella turned to ask what was wrong, she noticed Merrill’s hand on her thigh. But she couldn’t feel it. And in that moment, she remembered that peculiar absence of sensation from the waist down. Now was the time to worry about it, apparently.

“Bella—”

“You shattered every bone in your feet,” Isabela interrupted, “the bones in your left calf, and everything in the right leg up to and including the kneecap.” Her eyes were on the ground, and her grasp around Bella’s hands tightened so hard she almost protested. Almost. “Kitten has a little spell going to keep it from hurting until we can get you to Anders, which is why we’re here,” with her other hand, she gestured vaguely to the space to her left, “in Tevinter of all places. After you nearly died fighting off Tevinter zealots.”

Bella grimaced and glanced at Andor. He had had weeks to heal, and the wounds across his muzzle had faded into new scars. “Is that who they were?”

Isabela nodded. “A lieutenant hoping to please the Elder One with a very particular sacrifice.” She paused, looking at Bella with a hard frown. “You are taking this ‘destroyed almost every bone in your legs’ thing surprisingly well.”

Bella stared at her own legs now, hidden beneath the wolf pelt. Maybe it was because she couldn’t feel anything. Maybe it just hadn’t hit her yet. Maybe she had lost too much over the years for a body part to mean much in the grand scheme of things. “You said we’re here for Anders, right? Will he be able to fix it?”

“He said he’ll try,” Isabela replied, “but he made no promises.”

“I don’t need promises,” Bella said. She gave Isabela’s hand a tug. “I just need you.”

That got Isabela to smile, at long last. She crawled up onto the bed, entwining her other hand with Merrill’s. “You’ve never needed anything else, have you?”

“Nothing else has ever mattered.”

And Bella thought back to Adamant again, to the Fade and the Nightmare and that moment in front of Inquisitor Lavellan when she offered to sacrifice herself. She had thought that self-sacrifice wasn’t something she was capable of, that she was too passive and lazy for it. But with Isabela, Merrill, and Andor so close, she knew that wasn’t the case. After all, just weeks after that battle, she had nearly given her life to save her mabari. And she would’ve done it again in a heartbeat— for him, for Isabela, for Merrill. It wasn’t even a question. Just a promise, the one promise she did need.

That nothing would take them away from her again.


End file.
